Terra Incognita

This is what happens when you feel too much and everything you do feels like a race against time: you write a poem that some might argue reads a tad high-sounding. And you know you should be working towards curbing your heightened instinct of self-preservation which, coupled with your almost crippling thanatophobia, supposedly gives you and the traumas you’ve not exorcized away. Or at the very least you should not engage in writing verse that acts as a memento mori. But you still go for it because the alternative, denying the inevitability of death, is at best rather mundane – hidden behind the anxiety adjourned by everyday routine. More importantly, you do it because you’re aware of your relative privilege and you don’t write for you but for the ones that couldn’t/can’t/won’t be able to.

Terra incognita is a Latin phrase that translates as ‘unknown land’. In cartography, it refers to uncharted territory: regions that have not been explored or mapped/documented. By extension, unknown ideas/concepts, situations, subjects, etc.

‘Terra Incognita’ is about facing mortality. ‘Terra Incognita’ is about wanting ‘to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one’.

‘Terra Incognita’ appeared in hotdog magazine (London, UK: February 2018).